Help choosing my previous life

[Olo Demonsbane]

Empancipated Spawn, from Savage Species, is a very weird class. It's intended to let a character that got turned into an undead regain their former abilities over the course of three levels. However, if you just take two levels of the class, you get a) all of the feats of your previous self that you qualify for and b) all of the class abilities of one of your previous classes (though if it's a spellcasting class, you only get one spell of each level). That's quite a lot for just two class levels!

I'm building a Vampire Spawn (HD 4/LA 4) in a gestalt game, and I want to do something interesting with Empancipated Spawn. I'm looking for ideas as to what my character was before he got turned into a Vampire Spawn. Let's say a 20th level character, but remember that we only gain class abilities from one of the classes.

Some ideas I've had thus far:

Shadow Sun Ninja. Grabbing 10 initiator levels in 2 levels would be really cool, and monk abilities would play nicely with vampire spawn energy draining.
Telflammar Shadowlord. This way, we can get straight into shadowpouncing at an early level.
Truenamer. Because why not?
Spellthief. 20 levels of spellthief would actually let us steal some pretty good SLAs and get to use the 20th level Absorb Spell capstone


Basically, I'm not looking for necessarily the most optimized choice, but rather something that I can build the rest of the character's levels around.

[Maat Mons]

Does Recall Class Features still work if you no longer meet the prerequisites of the previous class?

[SirNibbles]

Does Recall Class Features still work if you no longer meet the prerequisites of the previous class?

I was thinking the same thing (Evil alignment and Shadow Sun Ninja) but there's nothing to imply that you would need to prerequisites in order to gain the benefits:




Recall Feats (Ex): At 1st level, an emancipated spawn remembers several aspects of her former existence. She regains all the feats she had as a living character, provided she meets their prerequisites. These remembered feats are in addition to any feats gained for advancing a level.

Recall Class Features (Ex): At 2nd level, an emancipated spawn remembers more of her former existence. She now can use all the Class Features of one former class, as a character of that former class's level. If the former class was a spellcasting class, the emancipated spawn is able to cast one spell of each level available to the character (if she was a wizard, she must still consult her spellbook, or learn from scrolls if her spellbook was lost when she became a spawn). if the character had a familiar, the empathic link between her and the familiar is reestablished.

Savage Species, page 76


Emphasis mine. You simply 'can use' all of the class features of your former class. This does not mean you gain all of your class features- it simply means you can freely choose to use any of them. Certain possibilities arise, such as gaining the benefits of War Hulk without being forced to have the No Time to Think ability.

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I think there are possible Legacy Champion builds that would be very potent if you dip a level of some other class before taking your second level of Emancipated Spawn.

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As for simply having a nice base, Master of the South Wind (Dragon Magazine #314) gets you full Monk progression, 5d6 sneak attack, and 4th level spells (Charisma based, spontaneous).

[Rebel7284]

Some thoughts:
- Dragon Ascendant: No spellcasting, but becoming a demi-god is nice.
- Druid: 9th level spells and Wildshape is one amazing class feature, not to mention animal companion.
- Beholder Mage: might be even somewhat reasonable with the reduced spell slots?
- Psion/Erudite/Ardent: Powers are not spells, so you would not be limited in the same way. Even if your Erudite was a Spell-To-Power Erudite. :smallcool:

Edit:
Illithid Savant, regain the ability to gain multiple abilities. :smallbiggrin:

[Olo Demonsbane]

Emphasis mine. You simply 'can use' all of the class features of your former class. This does not mean you gain all of your class features- it simply means you can freely choose to use any of them. Certain possibilities arise, such as gaining the benefits of War Hulk without being forced to have the No Time to Think ability.


Oh, that is interesting. Good find! Forsaker is another option, as is being an Apostle of Peace without having to have any of those pesky vows.



I think there are possible Legacy Champion builds that would be very potent if you dip a level of some other class before taking your second level of Emancipated Spawn.


Depending on how you read the class features text, you could get the abilities of a Mystic Theurge and get 10 levels of casting in two separate classes in one go.



As for simply having a nice base, Master of the South Wind (Dragon Magazine #314) gets you full Monk progression, 5d6 sneak attack, and 4th level spells (Charisma based, spontaneous).

That’s a nice prestige class, particularly for a rogue if you can sneak past the ki focus requirement, but while it gives some base abilities, they aren’t really enough to build around.


Some thoughts:
- Dragon Ascendant: No spellcasting, but becoming a demi-god is nice.
- Druid: 9th level spells and Wildshape is one amazing class feature, not to mention animal companion.
- Beholder Mage: might be even somewhat reasonable with the reduced spell slots?
- Psion/Erudite/Ardent: Powers are not spells, so you would not be limited in the same way. Even if your Erudite was a Spell-To-Power Erudite. :smallcool:

Edit:
Illithid Savant, regain the ability to gain multiple abilities. :smallbiggrin:

Taking a full psionics class is definitely the most powerful option. But the problem with that, from a build perspective, is that there really isn’t anywhere to go next after suddenly gaining so much manifesting ability. Anything you took the next level would be inconsequential in comparison. Illithid Savant and Dragon Ascendant are closer to what I was looking for, but since this requires being a Vampire Spawn, the racial prereqs rule them out. Druid is interesting, though actually a heavily ACF-ed Ranger would probably work even better; you could still get the Wild Shaping and the same thematics without having a 9th level spell overshadowing everything else.

[Rebel7284]

Taking a full psionics class is definitely the most powerful option. But the problem with that, from a build perspective, is that there really isn’t anywhere to go next after suddenly gaining so much manifesting ability. Anything you took the next level would be inconsequential in comparison.

A sudden shift in power is certainly on the table whatever option you chose, but there are definitely some things you can take after that are still relevant, if less powerful than going from 0 to full manifester.

1. Thrallherd: Yup, leadership on crack is definitely notable even compared to 9th level powers. Even if limited to your new ECL for cohort/thrall as it should be for SOME semblance of game balance. Progressing your manifester level is still relevant due to how augmentation works as well.

2. Monk: With Talashatora feat (possibly inherited from your previous life). Technically you could argue that you could take those feats without a level of Monk, but that's certainly unintended. Anyway, nearly a full Monk gestalt is nifty and can be combined with Metamorphosis and stuff for much better frontline performance. Sprinkle in Ascetic Monk to taste if you're Int based.

3. Meldshaping classes have pretty good synergy with psionics, and between Midnight Augmentation (wait, Con prereq... :() being a GREAT feat and then using Open Chakra, Psionic to effectively supercharge your meldshaping. You will need Undead Meldshaper feat though since Vampire Spawn don't exactly have a Con score.

--- admittedly drops off from here ---

4.In general, several dips from X Stat to Y Bonus threads are super helpful depending on what stats you chose to focus on.

5. Cleric 1 is a great dip and even has some handbooks dedicated to dipping it. Knowledge Devotion + Luck Domain + Law Devotion for example is a non-trivial set of bonuses.

[SirNibbles]

Another thing to consider is that you get all the feats you had for which you currently have the prerequisites. That means if you had 8 levels of Fighter for 5 Bonus Feats, you get to keep those feats even without 'remembering' your fighter class features. It shouldn't be too hard to manipulate this in order to get a 10 level PrC for the features you want and then 10 levels of classes that give you bonus feats.

Following the War Hulk example from earlier (even though it's suboptimal in general), Half-Minotaur LA 1/Fighter 8/Wizard 1/War Hulk 10

In addition to all the benefits of War Hulk, it gives you Toughness as a feat three times. That means that your first level of Emancipated Spawn 'remembers' those three Toughness feats. When you 'remember' you War Hulk class features, you get it another three times. I'm not going to pretend that +18 hit points is some world-shattering benefit. The important thing is the concept of gaining feats as bonus feats, whether multiple times or by gaining bonus feats from a class you don't want.

The fact that you need to be able to qualify for your feats when you take your first level of Emancipated Spawn (BAB +2, no spellcasting) does limit you somewhat, but you can still pick up a good number of feats.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Emancipated spawn could allow you to leap into epic levels without having to worry about whatever might bar your way in the campaign world you're in, simply by taking 20 levels prior to becoming undead, then 17 levels of other things after (including RHD and LA), followed by 3 levels in emancipated spawn, and voila -- level 40 without having to wade through all those epic XP tables or "qualify" (whatever that might entail) for becoming epic. Also useful if there's nothing else of a high enough level in the campaign world to be worth killing that far into epic.

[Crake]

Shadow Sun Ninja. Grabbing 10 initiator levels in 2 levels would be really cool, and monk abilities would play nicely with vampire spawn energy draining.

Initiator level is a function of levels in initiator classes/non initiator classes, not a class feature, so you would gain the maneuvers, but not the initiator levels, meaning you wouldn’t qualify for the maneuvers, meaning you wouldnt be able to use them. Of course, this can be mitigated by taking initiator class levels anyway, and being able to double up on initiator features, but ALSO keep in mind that shadow sun ninja doesnt have a maneuver reset mechanic, so your maneuvers from that would be 1/encounter. The only way to fix that is to take an initiator class BEFORE you gain the shadow sun ninja features, because if you gain them before a base class, then theyre stuck with the no reset mechanic, it cant be applied retroactively